Missouri! As the Civil War begins the state has two governors and two legislatures. Residents are divided in their loyalties to the Union and to the new Confederacy. Killing along the Missouri-Kansas border goes on, as it has for years. Control of the state is extremely important to President Lincoln in Washington and President Davis in Richmond. Both leaders know that Missouri controls the mighty Mississippi...that the retention of the state is paramount politically...that Missouri is the gateway to the vast resources of the untamed West. And yet the battle to retain Missouri is ignored by many eastern historians. In fact, the entire trans-Mississippi theater of operations receives scant notice. Strangely, the great battle for Missouri is fought not in that state but in Arkansas - At Pea Ridge (or Elkhorn Tavern) during the first day s of March 1862. For a time the fate of Missouri - and the nation- hangs in the balance during this largest battle fought west of the Mississippi River. To fill a void in Civil War history, Blue & Gray is devoting the greater part of this issue to Pea Ridge - where American Indians fight side by side with rough-and-tumble Texans, where rugged Midwesterners side with frontiersmen, where Missourians kill Missourians and Arkansans slay Arkansans - all for a principle. Pea Ridge is not a battle fought by city boys... Editor's Note.

This article is part of Blue & Gray magazine, volume 5, issue 3 ; January 1988, and includes all the regular articles and advertisments of that issue. This title is shelved near the Ospreys. In binder.

Letters --Pea Ridge, or Elkhorn Tavern : Arkansas - March 7-8, 1862, The Campaign, the Battle, and the men who fought for the fate of Missouri / by Michael Hughes -- Book reviews / Stephen Davis -- General's tour : battle of Pea Ridge / Dave Roth & Michael Hughes.